Slow Down and Reframe Decision-Making for Positive Influence

Making a fast decision is easy. Making a well-considered, nuanced recommendation is hard. But influential security executives take the time to slow down, explore challenges, and lay the groundwork for a long-term path toward opportunity.

At the 2025 CSO Center Secure Horizons event at GSX, sponsored by QCIC, senior security executives worked with business and leadership consultants Jen Hetzel Silbert and Tony Silbert to move away from firefighting and realign their thinking to generate more opportunity-centric, curious, and collaborative influence.

That’s not to say problem-solving isn’t important. In a time crunch, quick decisions informed by past experiences are often the best choice to address an emergency. But focusing solely on swiftly solving a problem can result in conflict, rather than progress.

When focusing on a problem during a meeting, what happens? Secure Horizons attendees shared that these sessions can devolve into groupthink, tunnel vision, a lack of active listening, finger-pointing or blame, disagreement about what the problem is, kicking the issue down the road, and an overall downward spiral of thought, action, and behavior.

Instead, challenge your perception of the issue to widen your field of view, suggest Silbert and Hetzel Silbert. After all, reality is the combination of problems or challenges and positive opportunities and skills. Applying a more positive lens can reveal the desired end state and uncover a more energizing path forward.

“What you seek, you find, and what you pay attention to grows,” Hetzel Silbert says.

Start by slowing down. Especially if you are regularly in firefighting mode, it can be difficult to take an extra few moments or even days to evaluate a challenge. But taking additional time to observe actual conditions—rather than making quick inferences—can help mitigate the risk of biases and assumptions creeping into decision-making.

Before taking action, evaluate your decision by asking yourself—or the person making a decision—some key, open-ended questions:

• What was going on at the time?
  
  
• What got my attention?
  
  
• How do I interpret that information and why?
  
  
• What did I assume was happening, or what did I assume someone was doing?
  
  
• Given such circumstances, what did I conclude?
  
  
• How does this align to what I have come to believe?
  
  

Try this for yourself. Imagine you are the security director for a transportation and logistics facility, and an essential piece of equipment is suddenly missing. Do you jump to the conclusion that the equipment was stolen? Or do you slow down and check data, logs, surveillance video, and other information to see whether the equipment was simply moved? Do you want to solve a single incident of equipment being relocated or launch a broader, positive effort within the workplace to improve communication about equipment use and tracking?

That last question widens the lens to include issues of influence. Influential leaders spur change throughout the organization, leading to enhanced opportunity. By evaluating perceived problems with an open, curious mind, senior security leaders can uncover keys to bigger conversations.

A common problem cited by Secure Horizons attendees was poor communication. That can have myriad root causes, including stress, ego, incorrect intelligence, poor listening, cultural or language barriers, wrong channels, or assumptions and biases, the CSOs said. The outcomes of bad communication can be dire: wasted time or resources, negativity, disengagement, erosion of trust, or even loss of life.

But what if you looked at the other side of that coin—what are the root causes of integral, open communication? CSOs called out rapport, trust, active listening, candor, initiative, understanding different perspectives, curiosity, and authenticity. The outcomes can include collaboration, efficiency, high performance, fewer repeated mistakes, greater trust, stronger relationships, and a championship-winning attitude.

By focusing on the opportunity, you can solve for the problem. Looking at the positive outcomes you want can create an upward spiral with more engagement, enthusiasm, and buy-in.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore the problem. Instead, use the problem to find its foil—the desired long-term outcome. This viewpoint provides a more holistic view of the scenario, even though it takes more time to realize.

Want year-round education, thought-leadership, and peer-to-peer connection? Learn more about the ASIS International CSO Center here.

Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or via email at [email protected].